1. Field of the Disclosure
The present disclosure relates generally to formation fluid collection and testing.
2. Description of the Related Art
During drilling of a wellbore and after the drilling process, clean fluid from the formation is often extracted to determine the nature of the hydrocarbons in hydrocarbon-bearing formations. Fluid samples are often collected in multiple chambers and the collected samples are tested to determine various properties of the extracted formation fluid. To drill a well, drilling fluid is circulated under pressure greater than the pressure of the formation in which the well is drilled. The drilling fluid invades into the formation to varying depths, thus contaminating the fluid in the invaded section or zone. To collect clean formation fluid samples, a formation testing tool is conveyed into the wellbore. A pump typically extracts the formation fluid via a sealed probe placed against the inside wall of the wellbore. An initial portion or amount of the extracted fluid is the contaminated fluid, which typically flows through a tortuous flow line to which sample chambers are connected via secondary flow lines. These secondary flow lines may retain a certain volume of the contaminated fluid. When the clean formation fluid is supplied to a sample chamber, the contaminated fluid in its associated secondary line enters the sample chamber. It is desirable to remove the contamination from the secondary lines before collecting the formation fluid in the sample chambers.
The disclosure herein provides apparatus and method for collecting and testing formation fluids that remove at least some of the contamination in the fluid lines before collecting formation fluid samples in sample chambers.